Chlorine Sky

by Mahogany L. Browne

  & try to hide the history

  of where my people from

  the ones that got a pit bull with a chain around its neck & smoke clouds everywhere

  I put a T-shirt on top

  & try to hide where I come from

  the kind of folks that park on the lawn & clean they car

  with the Gap Band blasting out the door speakers

  I put a T-shirt on top

  & hope no one asks where my dad works.

  Where my dad is?

  Why my sister, Essa, & I always fight on the lawn?

  I just want to swim

  in the teal green sorta blue bubble

  & forget all the things that make me different

  for a little while.

  BASKETBALL DRILLS #1

  both hands grip the orange world

  ridges in black talk back to my fingertips

  James

  Bird

  Bryant

  Catchings

  Jordan

  Leslie

  Curry

  Hammon

  Jackson

  Iverson

  Johnson

  For every letter of their name

  I plant my feet aim & shoot

  if I flick my left wrist perfectly

  I’ll soar like the greats.

  AFTER MY DRILLS

  Lay Li & I both sit in the shade

  on the front lawn of the neighborhood candy house

  Miss Irene got white hair & a permanent scowl

  She got white hair, a little white lapdog & wear a dusty muumuu

  She smokes cigarettes, the white stick hanging from the cliff of her lip

  Like a daredevil

  Miss Irene say she ain’t got time for us kids

  & don’t let nobody curse on her front yard

  But she got a Costco card & charge pennies on the dollar

  for our favorite sweets

  We get a dollar worth of candy in a plastic sandwich bag

  that we share

  After my basketball drills, I walk around the barbed gate

  of the neighborhood pool

  I climb into the blue green water and float for days

  Really I only got an hour before the pool closes

  But I don’t care when I’m floating

  It lets me think

  My eyes closed or searching the sky for animal figures

  Ice cream cones & airplanes that skip across the blue blue up

  The aqua water carry my arms & legs

  A body of girl & whoosh

  When I’m too tired to move my calves & arms

  I climb out the water & feel less rubber band

  & more light light

  Most days the water burns everything

  my nose & eyes & even my hair is too dry

  but I feel clean

  I feel more me than when I arrived

  Lay Li meets me after the pool

  She ain’t get in the pool but she still wears

  her tube top bikini, a towel draped around her shoulder

  like a comma.

  She bites at her cuticles & I already know

  It’s been almost two years since silly boys slapped water in the pool

  Now the boys are gone & it’s just me doing floating like a log

  while Mommy & Me classes happen in the shallow end

  my muscles hurt after playing Horse alone

  A girl on the basketball court ain’t no different

  than any other baller, if you work hard enough

  that’s what my cousin Inga say

  She the first one to teach me to hold the globe with both hands

  to use my right hand to guide the ball.

  Finally out of the pool

  I can see the harsh water peels my skin

  I don’t have any cocoa butter on me

  So I pull my legs up, crisscross-applesauce

  & focus on Lay Li.

  When she bites her nails it’s not because she’s nervous

  More like anxious and angry

  & always it’s about her mama

  “So what happened?” I ask

  & she frowns at her hands

  Then covers her face from the dipping sun

  She shrugs

  & instantly I feel bad

  I know what it feels like to have

  Too much to say

  So much you can’t speak

  I make noise when I’m nosy

  I slap the mosquitoes gnawing at my legs

  It’s been a year since we last talked

  about her mama but that’s the only

  thing that bothers her enough

  to bite-ruin her perfect nails

  But Lay Li don’t sweat it

  she don’t swing at the mosquitoes

  she don’t even miss a beat.

  “That woman been gone so long

  I can barely remember what she looks like.”

  I CAN’T IMAGINE

  what it’s like to forget my mother’s face

  I sit quiet & wait for her story to unfold

  My mama still on drugs

  & my daddy ain’t got time for all that

  He don’t want us girls to see her like that

  He says every child deserve to be the sun

  To know they come from the sun

  & if the sun snuff itself to dusk before its time

  & no shine is left to see

  Let it be

  One day we woke up & she was already

  a cloudy shadow of herself

  Then one day we woke up & she was

  gone

  She only come home when she clean

  She only call home when she sorta sober

  She ain’t never remembered my birthday

  or my sisters’ birthday & I’m like whatever.

  When you live where we live

  You say what it is & if you can’t say what it is

  Or if it hurt too much

  Or maybe it’s too confusing

  You just say “whatever.”

  That way you ain’t no lie

  DON’T NOBODY WANT TO CALL IT

  Especially when it got more faces than any solitary name

  but if I’m honest

  I want to know if Lay Li seen the zombies too

  The ones who take over my uncles’ bodies

  after weeks of playing ghost

  only to return him to our front door

  with his clothes all crumpled

  & eyes brimming red

  Lay Li is the only one I can talk to about

  The smell of hot ash & burned glass

  “You know what it looks like.”

  She stands up from the grass

  swinging her dry striped towel in the air

  “It looks like the walking dead.”

  ON THE WAY TO MY HOUSE

  I need to rinse the chlorine off my skin

  I need to remember who I am

  Lay Li say, “Where’s your cocoa butter?”

  & I know she wants to call me ashy.

  When I walk through the front door

  I’m surprised no one is home

  I turn on the television & tell Lay Li I’ll be right back

  Right out the blue Lay Li calls to me already running up the stairs

  “I’m just tired of crying

  over someone

  that’s been gone so long.”

  LAY LI LAUGHS

  like the joke’s on everybody but her

  Lay Li

&nb
sp; squints into the mirror & pouts

  Lay Li

  applies more lipstick than a little

  Lay Li

  takes my lip gloss as backup just in case

  Lay Li say

  “It’s so boring here. Let’s call Shawn.”

  I laugh like the joke is on Shawn

  He’s her old crush & first real boyfriend

  Since her mama left the house

  But then I realized she just called my house boring

  & now my feelings are hurt.

  Lay Li say

  “Don’t be like that. I ain’t mean nothing by it.”

  Lay Li

  pull my ponytail a little

  Lay Li

  is forgiven

  again.

  I MOVE

  her hand & brush at my hair

  I mimic the mirror

  Reach to take back my lip gloss

  & my pride

  from Lay Li’s hands

  It’s the inexpensive kind from the neighborhood CVS

  She pretends she’s gonna keep it

  like a child & its pacifier

  her arms swing above both of our heads

  helicopter style

  Out of my reach

  She is pleased with herself

  & giggling to my hands

  waving in the air

  fire the roof is on fire

  but it ain’t

  & I don’t crack a smile

  This makes her laugh even harder

  All her teeth showing

  All my steam moving like a cloud when I cut my eyes

  She sighs

  rolls her eyes

  then tosses it to me before she grabs the phone

  & dials with one last perfect pink nail

  same color as Essa’s (I think)

  But I don’t say anything

  Just pucker my lips as

  she watches me with boring eyes apply the sheen

  Like an impostor.

  SNITCHES

  get stitches

  So I know how to mind my own business

  & make sure I don’t tell everybody

  the things I know.

  It’s funny

  I ain’t realize how much silent sauce I got

  Until someone stop talking when Lay Li walk by.

  Everything go quiet

  Like midnight black

  Like static on the TV

  Like the sound my mama made that time I asked

  “Where is daddy?”

  Or like the sound my mama made the time I asked

  “What is prison?”

  I know what silent sounds like

  Lay Li & I haven’t talked not once

  Since the phone call with Shawn

  It’s been a whole week

  & the argument has grown teeth

  Buried its fangs into our friendship

  & won’t let go.

  I tried to shake it loose

  Even after she accused me

  “You trying to break me & Shawn up?!”

  Her and Shawn been on and off all summer

  He go to high school on the west side of town

  & one of the freshest high tops.

  She say “You trying to break me & Shawn up?”

  And I think I want my friend back.

  But not like that

  Just want to be able to talk to the only one

  who care about how I look when I leave the house

  “Girl, brush your hair”

  Just want to be able to talk to the only one

  who cares about how I look

  “Lil, give them basketball shorts a break.”

  Even when she get on my nerves & fix me up with boys

  Who can’t seem to stand me

  The same boys who get mad when I beat them on the court

  They say I talk too much mess

  I say “Only on the court”

  & I ain’t no liar, on the court is where it belong

  With Lay Li I don’t have to think too hard

  I’m the friend of the star

  & I don’t mind, not at all

  It gives me time to think about my dreams & the WNBA

  But when I call Lay Li & she don’t pick up

  A pit in my stomach grows like a redwood tree

  A WEEK LATER

  & Lay Li still avoid me like the plague

  Or a pop quiz

  Or a dentist appointment

  Or that person who just ate onions for lunch

  She don’t pick up my calls & now I see her with Samantha, Octavia, Teeja & Tiffany.

  So I start to spend every day after school at the basketball court doing drills

  I think

  Maybe today I’ll run into Lay Li at the pool

  Maybe today she will show up

  Maybe today she won’t be mad at me anymore

  Maybe today she treat me better than dirt

  I only get sad when I round the corner & see only

  the Mommy & Me group is in the pool

  I pull off my basketball shorts & tug the straps of my stupid swimsuit

  before I dive into the deep end.

  THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL

  I’m mad

  Essa got on my nerves the night before

  & made a joke about me not having no friends

  “Look at Lay Li,” she said. “Even she don’t want to be around you!”

  Today, I sit around the taco bar

  near the far side of the lunchroom

  & remember all the places I can easily disappear into.

  1. Sit by the bench under the tree by the bus stop

  Sit next to the girl with her brand-new bra gleaming in the locker room

  & I can hear everybody lying to each other.

  I sip on my Capri-Sun

  & remember what happens

  when everyone talks around me

  like no one is listening.

  2. Sit by the hopscotch outline on the concrete

  by the house

  3. Sit by the stairs near the attendance office

  I hear them say

  I sip tea

  I say

  I mind my own

  But everything is everything when you are just who you are

  No one special enough to cause a stir

  No one who would cause boys to break their necks

  I ain’t mad that I don’t stand out

  I just know I’ve never stood out before.

  When I was younger, I thought I had superpowers

  Thought if I sat real still and stared at a book

  No one would be able to see me

  I got so good at it

  I forget that I’m the only one playing the game

  Sit still with a book or my head down & you can go missing

  & just like that

  Everybody talks so much around me

  It’s like I ain’t even there

  Sometimes

  I forget I’m there too

  that’s how I hear too much information

  that’s how I learn all the things I didn’t know

  I want to know.

  My lunch of hard shell tacos turns to mush in my hands

  Just like me

  They can’t hold on to everything anymore

  I’m tired of chasing people to be my friend

  In my head I can still hear her when we argued

  “You ruined everything”

  “You ruined everyt
hing”

  “You ruined everything”

  I’m tired of being worried about people not liking me

  I can’t do it anymore

  I can’t let Essa get under my skin

  I can’t let my opponents on the court make me feel like I don’t belong

  I don’t even want these damn tacos anymore

  I drop my tray in the trash & head out the door

  BASKETBALL DRILLS #2

  My sister, Essa,

  is the smart one

  I shoot swish

  But she also lies so much

  I think it’s her favorite song

  I shoot swish

  She lies so much she never know when the truth sneaks up

  I shoot

  She lies so much it sound like a history lesson

  miss

  She lies so much she’ll make you believe rain is a color coming out the sky

  I shoot

  & when she lies like she do

  I still think she makes rainbows

  miss

  Because no one forgets her name.

  I shoot

  backboard bounce swish

  Everywhere she goes they laugh at all her jokes

  Everywhere she goes they call her brilliant

  Everywhere she goes they also call her slick talker

  I shoot miss shoot miss shoot bricks

  Essa lies so much she never knows when the truth sneaks up

  & smack her in the mouth!

  shoot: swish

  (That’s what our grandma Maxi say)

  & I think it’s hilarious

  I laugh & laugh & laugh

  with all my teeth showing

  shoot: swish

  except Grandma Maxi don’t play that

  “kids laughing at grown folks’ jokes.”

  So

  S H O O T MY S H O T

  I grin real big

  with my lips shut

  t i g h t…

  (swish)

  ON THE WEEKEND, I GO TO THE MALL WITH ESSA & INGA